Daily Thoughts 7/14/2011

[Group of young women reading in library of normal school, Washington, D.C.]
Date Created/Published: [1899]


Daily Thoughts 7/14/2011


I read a bit more of On Leadership on the train to work.


This morning, I checked the Twitter account, got a donation of books, checked the displays, and checked the Ereference.  There were a number of interesting donations; Catullus the Complete Poems, The Life of Pi by Yan Martel, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson were a few of the books worth adding to the collection.


I received an invitation to Google+ in my email this morning.  Hopefully, it should be interesting.

We added a set of eight more pictures to our Historic Library Images, Adult Circulation Through Time...
http://www.mountvernonpubliclibrary.org/node/282

We have two programs.  One is a Wills Workshop where wills are being discussed.  We are also opening the computer lab on Thursdays from 2-4 p.m. to help with the overflow from the cybercorner.  People seem to mainly be doing job search online.

The books, Curation Nation Why The Future of Content Is Context How To Win In a World Where Consumers Are Curators by Steven Rosenbaum came in for me to read.  This is a book on content.   Also the science fiction book, Out of the Dark by David Weber came in for me to read.  It is a book about alien invasion of earth.

Web Bits


What skills does a Digital Archivist or Librarian Need?
http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2011/07/what-skills-does-a-digital-archivist-or-librarian-need/

The 5 Most Stolen Books by Gabe Habash
http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/?p=5788

Daily Thoughts 11/4/2010 (programs, the story of stuff)

Boston Sunday herald. The Boston herald opera house next Sunday March 8th. (1893-1897)

Daily Thoughts 11/4/2010

Today has been another quiet, steady day.  I spent some time checking the displays.  We had the counselor from SCORE come in today to do small business counseling.  It is his first set of sessions today.  We have four people signed up for one hour sessions.  I also got a call for tomorrow to speak to a gentleman from the Association of Community Based Artists of Westchester who will be talking to me about doing a poetry reading series.  I have his book on display.

There is another meeting from a womans legal service.  We are providing some reading if they want to check out books on issues like parenting, domestic violence, and other things.

The book, The Master Switch The Rise And Fall of Information Empires came in for me to read by Tim Wu.  It is a business history book.

I read some more of The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard.  She is writing about consumerism and advertising.  Personally, I am not a fan of having a huge amount of stuff.  I also don't watch much television or advertising.  I do like things, but would rather own less and have it be better quality.  Part of her discussion is about planned obsolescence; making things so that they are easily disposed of.  She also talks about how shopping does not bring happiness.

Tomorrow is the book sale of the Friends of the Library.  I'll definitely stop by and have some coffee and look at the tables of books.

Daily Thoughts 8/10/2010 ( programs, local history )

Peter Dell the Elder: Portrait of Jakob Woler; Würzburg 1529; boxwood

Daily Thoughts 8/10/2010

On the train to work, I read a little bit more of Mental Health Naturally.  The section I read was on the communication; how to talk to yourself so you don't put yourself down as well as change negative conversations.  I also took a little bit of time to read some more of Smart Start-Ups.  I was reading about how to keep a low profile, ask users for funding, and generate interest in your site.





While reading through Shelf Awareness an email newsletter, I saw an interesting book on books, Bring on the Books for Everybody: How Literary Culture Became Popular Culture by  Jim Collins.  None of our libraries have it yet.  I am going to request it through interlibrary loan.




This morning I spent a little bit of time in the local history room.  There is a fairly large photograph collection in there.  Many of the photographs are not yet identified.  There are also a lot of photographs of our building dating all the way back to its founding.  There is even a painting of the library from 1906 with a picture of a horse and buggy in front of the library. 




I also spent some time in a meeting for planning the events that are happening in the next two months.  We are going to have the Graphic Novels Club and the Brown Bag Book Chat as ongoing events because they have been working so far.  I have to work a little bit on better publicity for these events.




I was reading through Publishers Weekly and came across something a little bit unusual.  There is a zombie novel written for teenagers written in a haiku style by K.A. Holt and illustrated by Gahan Wilson called Brains For Lunch.  It is a curiosity to me to see it in the books for teens section.

Daily Thoughts 5/8/2009

The Owl 1896

Daily Thoughts 5/8/2009

Hello, I went to the Westchester Library Association
conference today. I had a great time. During the first
part, I spent quite a bit of time talking to Baker and
Taylor about some of the different things which we
needed to do. I took away a few interesting ideas.
Baker and Taylor has a leasing program for books and
dvds where you can get a number of items for a brief
period, keep a few of them and return the rest. I think
this may be good for our bestsellers and other high
demand items.

This is a link for a slideshow on the first program I
attended, Programming on a Shoestring presented by Janie Hernan.

http://www.slideshare.net/JanieH/high-impact-programs-on-a-shoestring-budget-presentation . It is what was
presented.

There were some comments that were not part of the
slideshow. If you base your programs on highly
circulating items in a collection you are more likely to
get a crowd of people. You need to tie in your programs
with books. It is not just about numbers, it is about
audience satisfaction as well.

At least once a month you should spend money on a large
program that will definitely draw a crowd. Don't give
up. We plan programs six months in advance.

She highlighted a number of programs including video and
photo contests, gaming nights, podcasting events that
have already happened. She mentioned poetry as a nice
draw. There are always of local poets. Poetry readings
work well.

You need to do an adult summer reading club. You need
to tell the adults who are coming for the teenage and
childrens summer reading program that there is also an
adult summer reading program.

The objective is to become the communities living room
where there are a lot of activities all over the library
for people. The library showed worldcup soccer on the big
screen in the community room. Her library showed Obama's
inauguratiion at the library.

Her library has not had an official survey, be they do spot
surveys after each program to see what people want.
They fill out a short sheet for feedback.

This is what I got from my first session at the
conference.

I also attended a session on Library Advocacy For Tough
Economic Times presented by Michael J. Borges. This was interesting. I

wasn't sure what to make of it. The presenter basically outlined
what you needed to do as an advocate for libraries.

He emphasized a number of different things; start at the
top where the money is, before you ask for money build
lots of friendships in your community, libraries have a
built in constituency, their patrons. This constituency
includes a friends group and your
foundation.

You should have a newsletter and an email newsletter
which you can send to people. Try and get other
libraries to help you. Libraries are too fragmented,
they should help each other more.

One surprising statement was that you cannot target
twitter and many social tools. Your message should be
targeted.

This is a brief of summary of what I heard. It is not
everything, it is just what I thought was
interesting.

I had a chance to talk with many different people and
collect a lot of business cards. There are some useful
changes which may be coming as a result of the
conference. I am still pondering a few ideas right now.

The lunch was not bad. I had the vegetarian lunch. Lee
Child was there to give a speech about his thrillers as
a key note speaker. I thought his speech was
entertaining. My favorite part was his statement about
writers block. He asked the audience if they ever got
librarians block. He would put his mortgage, his bills,
and his contract in front of him and start
writing.

The last session which I attended was on Your Role In
Achieving Positive Change presented by Ma' lis Wendt. The speaker gave

two resources http://www.appreciativeinquiry.org and http://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/ActiveListening.htm This was about a set

of tools which helps people react to change in a more positive way.

Appreciate Inquiry is supposed to help people identify the positive aspects of change and focus on how to build on past successes. I still have to take a closer look at the website and read it more. It was a very upbeat session.

Good Evening

Fyodor Dostoyevsky is one of my favorite writers of classic fiction, The Brothers Karamazov is one of my favorite books.

Good Evening

Today has been another extremely busy day. I spent time preparing to show a Tyler Perry film at the library. I really enjoyed it. We had seven people who sat through the whole film and a few others who came in and out. It seems that I am doing much better with the poetry readings than the films. They are moving the films to a Sunday matinee for families once a week. I think this will work bettter.

Right now, they are showing an anime film, Claymore, in the fiction room. There is an anime club at our library which brings in the teenagers. They also play Magic the Gathering card game at the club as well. It looks like the attendance is decent.

I also spent some time talking to an artist who did papercrafts in the childrens room. She also teaches tissue paper watercolors, as well as illustration. About a year ago, she started doing manga classes. The manga classes are what interest me most. I was thinking we could do a program that would be for teens and adults to draw manga.

Of course, I did the regular activities as well, more weeding in the social science section, and maintaining the central display.

On the way home, I tried to read How To Do Everything With Your Web 2.0 Blog by Todd Stauffer, but found I had already done everything that I wanted to do listed in the book. I am not going to start a wiki, or do podcasts, start a forum, or do video blogging, at least not yet. I am not that fond of Technorati, and I already have Sitemeter. This book would be a good introduction to blogging, but I have found I am past the introductory stage at this point. It did, however remind me to ping my blog with pingomatic.